The Guthrie Theater production of Tales from Hollywood, part of its Christopher Hampton Celebration, officially opens Sept. 21 following previews that began Sept. 15.

Tales from Hollywood, described as a "biting comedy about German intellectual émigrés escaping Nazi Germany for the film industry in Los Angeles," continues through Oct. 27 on the Guthrie’s Wurtele Thrust Stage. Ethan McSweeny directs.

The cast features Lee Sellars as the wry and knowing narrator Ödön von Horváth, "who takes the audience through a world of expatriates in Tinseltown"; Keir Dullea as novelist Heinrich Mann; Stephen Yoakum as the turbulent and cynical Bertolt Brecht; Julia Coffey as Ödön’s love interest Helen Schwartz; Bob Davis as Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann; Laura Esping as his wife Katja Mann; Allison Daugherty as Nellie Mann; Summer Hagen as Angel; Charity Jones as Marta Feuchtwanger; Barbara Kingsley as Salka Viertel; Bill McCallum in the dual roles of Art Nicely and Lion Feuchtwanger; Kris L. Nelson as Hal; Dan Shor in the dual roles of Charles Money and Jacob Lomakhin; John Skelley as Young Man; and Anna Sundberg as Helene Wiegel.

The Hampton Celebration will continue with Appomattox, his new play "bridging 1865 and 1965 and the American Civil War and Civil Rights Era," which runs Sept. 29-Nov. 11 and will be directed by David Esbjornson.

This new political drama will feature Harry Groener in the dual roles of Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson, Sally Wingert as Mary Todd Lincoln and Lady Bird Johnson, Shawn Hamilton as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Greta Oglesby as Coretta Scott King and Mary Todd Lincoln confidante Elizabeth Keckley.

The company will also feature M. Cochise Anderson as Col. Ely S. Parker/Chef, Mark Benninghofen in the dual roles of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Nicholas Katzenbach, Ernest Bentley as Union Guard/Jimmie Lee Jackson/John Lewis, Mark Boyett as George Wallace, David Anthony Brinkley as David Porter/James Bonard Fowler, Stephen Cartmell as Edward Alexander/Cartha DeLoach, Danny Robinson Clark as Old Man/Cager Lee, Tonia Jackson as Viola Jackson, Philip Kerr as Robert E. Lee/Richard Russell, Karen Landry as Mary Custis Lee, Michael Milligan as John Wilkes Booth/John Rawlins/Lee Harvey Oswald/Jack Valenti, Richard Ooms as Howell Cobb/Edgar Ray Killen, Angela Pierce as Julia Grant/Viola Liuzzo and Brian Reddy as Wilmer McLean and J. Edgar Hoover with Shá Cage, Brian James and Joe Nathan Thomas. The American premiere of Embers, Hampton’s adaptation of a novel by Sándor Márai about "passion, truth and the passing of time, depicts two long-estranged friends reunited amid piercing unanswered questions," according to press notes. Artistic director Joe Dowling will direct. The production, which runs Oct. 9-27, will feature James A. Stephens as Henrik, Barbara Bryne as Nini and Nathaniel Fuller as Konrad.